Aerolineas Argentinas to operate new flights to Cuba, Mexico and the Dominican Republic

Argentina's flagship carrier, Aerolineas Argentinas (AA) has announced that starting January next year they'll be flying to a new range of Caribbean destinations, namely Cuba, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. The South American airline seeks to profit from the sizeable (and growing) market of Argentinean tourists choosing the Caribbean as their favoured holiday destination.

Starting January next year, Aerolineas Argentinas (AA) will start flying to Cuba as well as to other new destinations in the Caribbean as part of a plan to expand their routes to this geographical area.

The news was confirmed very recently by Mariano Recalde, the airline's president, who also explained to Prensa Latina the decision for such a move:

"We decided to fly to Havana and Punta Canca because up until this point those destinations had been served by foreign airline companies, bringing them revenues of between 15 and 18 million dollars per month

"The idea is not to get more Argentineans to travel to the Caribbean, but to allow Aerolineas to participate and take a chunk of that market which looks extremely attractive from a commercial point of view."

The first Buenos Aires - Havana flight will take off on Sunday 4th January 2015, the same month that the new routes to Cancun, Mexico and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic will commence operations, all with stopover in Caracas, Venezuela. The aircraft for these new flights will be a Boeing 737-800 with capacity for up to 170 passengers.

In the case of Cuba, for example, Argentina is the main tourism market responsible for sending the largest number of holidaymakers from South America to the Caribbean island. A total of 94, 697 Argentine tourists flew to the island in 2012, 90,084 flew there in 2013 and this year, in the period from January to August, a total of 50,586 of them have taken Cuba holidays.

Most of these tourists have made their Cuba journey flying with LAN, COPA, TACA and Cubana de Aviacion, although Ecuatorian airline Tame and Colombian airline Avianca have also joined in over the last few months.

AA will start flying to Punta Cana on Saturday 3rd January with three weekly flights (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday), whilst a twice-weekly flight frequency has been established for Cuba on Sundays and Wednesdays. The new route to Cancun will depart on Mondays and Fridays.

Recalde also added that starting April next year new routes to Quito and Guayaquil in Ecuador would kick off.

"This means that once again the continent's flagship will be present" - he said, as those Ecuador routes, previously serviced by Spanish carriers had been closed down.

With this new expansion AA's air operations will increase by 15 per cent in 2015 whilst their number of seats will grow by 16 per cent.